J. F. Campbell Collection > Temora, an ancient epic poem, in eight books

^6 T E M O R A:
like a relieved beam, are ye ken. in the defart wild ; but ye retire
in your blalls before our fleps approach. — Go then, ye feeble race !
knowledge with you there is none. Your joys are weak, and like
the dreams of our reft, or the light-winged thought that flics acrofb
the foul. Shall Cathmor foon be low ? Darkly laid in his nar-
row houfe ? where no morning comes with her half-opened eyes. —
Away, thou fhade ! to fight is mine, all further thought away ! I
rufii forth, on eagle wings, to feize my beam of fanie. In the
lonely vale of ftreams, abides the little * foul. — Yeai's roll on, fea-
fons return, but he is flill unknown. — In a blaft comes cloudy
death, and lays his grey head low. His ghoft is rolled on the va-
pour of the fenny field. Its courfe is never on hills, or mofly vales
of wind. So fliall not Cathmor defart, no boy in the field was.
he, who only marks the bed of roes, upon the echoing hills.
* From this pafTage we learn In what tion, not far advanced in civilization. It
fXtreme contempt an indolent and unwar- is a curious, but juft, obfervation ; that
Jilce life was held in thofe days of hcroifin. great kingdoms feldom produce great cha-
Whatever a philofophcr may fay, in praife raiders, which mufl be altogether attri-
of quiet and retirement, I am far from buted to that indolence and diffipaiion,
thinking, but they weaken and debafe the which are the infeparable companions of
human mind. When the faculties of the too much property and fecurity. Rome, it
foul are not exerted, they lofe their vigour, is certain, had more real great men with-
and low and circumfcribed notions take the in it, when its power was confined withia
place of noble and enlarged ideas. Ac- the narrow bounds of Latium, than when
lion, on the contrary, and the viciflitudes its dominion extended over all the known
of fortune which attend it, call forth, by world ; and one petty flate of the Saxon
turns, all the powers of the mind, ami, hy heptarchy had, perhaps, as much genuine
exercifing, ftrengthen them. Hence it is, fplrit in it, as the two Britifti kingdoms
that in great and opulent ftates, when united. As a fiate, we are much more
property and inJolencc are fecurcd to indi- powerful than our anceftors, but we would
viduals, we f.idom meet with that ftrength lofe by comparing individuals with ihem.
of mind, which is fo common in a na-
My